The Mug
by alanwolfmoon
Summary: There's a pneumonia epidemic in the oncology ward and Wilson needs House's help tracking the source--little does he know it's himself. Set soon after The Greater Good.


"House," said Wilson, walking in holding a stack of files, "I've got a epidemic in the oncology ward. Presenting in the immuno-compromised patients, though none in clean rooms."

House looked up.

"What are the symptoms?"

"Pneumonia, bone pain, meningitis… that's only the three most common symptoms."

House sighed, taking the pile of folders.

"Tell Cuddy to have her students check for possible sources of transmission between the rooms. I'll try to find out what it is."

Wilson sighed, "thank you, House."

House shrugged, "interesting case."

Wilson smiled wearily, and left.

House punched in a lot of numbers on his pager, telling the team to come.

Foreman showed up almost immediately, "what's the emergency?"

"Need the team. Wilson's found an outbreak of something in the collection of infection-susceptible people he calls the oncology ward."

Foreman rolled his eyes, "you paged me with a 911 to have me find the team?"

"No," said House, "I paged you with a 911 because I paged everyone else with less urgent codes."

Foreman frowned, "you wanted to talk to me?"

House nodded, lifting the blanket over his leg, covering his bad leg sitting out in front of him, shoeless, the foot quite swollen.

"I didn't want you complaining in front of the kids if it seemed odd for me to not be going anywhere at some point during the differential. Or calling the janitor to fix the thermostat, which I turned all the way down and then broke, which is why it's so cold in here, and is my excuse for the blanket."

Foreman crouched, looking at the foot.

It wasn't purple, or bruised…

He looked up at House, "what's wrong with it?"

"It's not the foot, it's the thigh. The whole leg gets swollen sometimes."

Foreman frowned, "why are you telling me this?"

"So you'll know that it's not me being stubborn or a serious problem. It's just a bad day."

Foreman sighed, standing, as House reached down, pulling the blanket back over the leg, "okay."

House nodded, "good."

The kids filed in, and Foreman handed them the files, "Wilson found an epidemic in the oncology ward."

Cuddy sighed, rubbing her forehead, as she walked down the hall, looking in the rooms she passed.

The med students were interviewing all twenty-three patients.

How could something spread between all these rooms?

None of the staff were sick… there were no sources of infection… there hadn't been any contamination in the hospital food…

House sighed, as Foreman wrote all eight reported symptoms on the board.

"Parasites, bacteria, fungus… we don't have to think about if it's a toxin, Cuddy's army of med students'll find that out."

"There aren't any staff common to all the rooms."

"Then it's got to be a chain of transmission."

House nodded, "fungus is less likely, takes more time to infect a healthy host—although it is possible someone was exhaling the spores before they were symptomatic, so if we can't think of anything more likely, we should consider it. Fevers are too high for viral. Which means this thing is probably bacterial."

The kids were starting to look cold, as they continued the differential.

Finally, Taub asked, "why is it so cold in here?"

"Cuddy's punishing House by disabling the thermostat," said Foreman, sounding weary.

Everyone immediately focused back on the differential, having no interest in getting into something between Cuddy and House.

The kids went to test for the infections they had come up with, and Foreman sat down at the table, wearing his overcoat, and picked up a journal off the table.

House really would have liked to go talk to Wilson, but he couldn't move walk. He pulled the blanket partway down, intending to try and massage the leg into some semblance of functionality.

But as soon as he put any pressure on it at all, the pain spiked about two levels, and he had to grip the edge of the table and bite his lip to keep from making a noise.

Foreman looked up, as House's breathing became erratic.

The older doctor was hunched over his bad leg, breathing heavily, sweaty, and pale.

"Dude," said Foreman, "go home. We've got this under control."

"Don't have cable at home. Repair guy was supposed to come yesterday."

Foreman sighed, shaking his head.

"You can't go home, can you?"

House sighed, "well, since going home would probably require movement, and that isn't working so well, I'd say no."

Foreman shrugged, and went back to reading.

Wilson came in, a little flushed because he had his scarf and coat around himself in the warm hallway, "remember how I told you, like, five years ago, that your thermostat controls my office as well?"

House looked at the younger doctor, "no."

"Well, it does. Can you please turn it up? It's freezing in there. And here."

House shook his head, "it's broken."

Wilson sighed, and walked back into his office.

By two days after Wilson had brought the file, they had ruled out any likely bacterial infections, Cuddy's minions had ruled out toxins, and they had ruled out any fungi that made sense, and two people were close to death.

But House's leg was somewhat better, so it wasn't all bad news. And the thermostat had been fixed.

Thirteen sighed, leaning forward over the table, "maybe we should be looking for something we missed? Or someone who lied?"

"Care to be a little more specific?"

Wilson came in, shivering slightly, "House, can you please get the thermostat fixed already?"

House rolled his eyes, "it is fixed. Your office is probably just taking a long time to warm up."

Wilson left, still shivering.

House turned back to Thirteen, who sighed, shaking her head, "I don't know."

House sighed, getting up, "run cultures and titers for anything you can think of. See if you can find a patient healthy enough to survive a bronchoscopy. Most of the patients were pretty sick to start with, so you might have trouble finding one."

She and Kutner left.

"Taub, get an MRI of any patient that can survive the move."

House sighed, wincing, as he straightened and bent his bad leg, over and over, trying to ease some of the stiffness.

Foreman looked at him.

"Swimming might help."

House looked at the younger doctor.

Foreman shrugged, "you're cranky when you're hurting. And all that grunting is distracting."

House snorted, "I know I kind of tried to keep you from screwing up too badly with Thirteen, last week… but that doesn't mean we're friends and you have to look out for me."

"Didn't think it did. You're cranky when you're hurting and all that grunting is distracting."

House smirked.

They sat for a while.

Finally, House gripped his cane, pushing himself to his feet, "maybe I will do that."

Foreman blinked, "you're actually accepting my advice?"

House shrugged, "pacing would help, but I can't put weight on it. Swimming is a solution. Granted not as fun as a hot masseuse, but Cuddy chewed me out the last time I hired one."

Foreman snorted, "that's because you kept hitting on her in Spanish and she complained."

"Portuguese. Not Spanish. She was from brazil."

"Whatever."

House left, slowly and quite obviously painfully.

Foreman went back to reading.

The kids came back that afternoon, with negative cultures, and an inconclusive bronchoscopy specimen.

They paged House, who appeared twenty minutes after they paged him, with wet hair.

"Where were you?" asked Taub.

"Swimming," said House, limping in an sitting down.

Foreman noticed his gait was much more easy and balanced, and was kind of relived. House actually hadn't been that much worse of a bastard since the breakthrough pain started, but he was usually a better diagnostician when he wasn't distracted.

He sighed.

"Nobody else has gotten sick since the outbreak started, right?"

They nodded.

"Find out if there's any relation with the type of cancers they had. It's a long-shot, but it might give us some new information."

"We don't have their histories, Wilson does," said Thirteen.

House nodded, "Kutner, go get the histories."

Kunter nodded and got up, walking out into the hall and knocking on the door to Wilsons' office.

There was no response, although he could hear noise inside the office.

He opened the door.

Wilson was on the floor, flushed, coughing, and lips cyanotic.

"Shit!" exclaimed Kutner, kneeling and pressing his fingers to Wilson's carotid, "Dr. Wilson?"

Wilson's eyes slid over to look at Kutner, and the Indian doctor could see panic in the brown orbs.

"It's okay," he said, reassuringly, "hang in there."

Wilson closed his eyes, and continued to cough and gasp for breath.

House sighed, hanging his cane on the sink in the airlock, and limping in without bothering with a gown or mask.

He limping up to Wilson's bed, and gripped his friend's wrist, looking at his watch to checking the younger doctor's pulse. He was hooked up to a monitor, but it never hurt to check.

Wilson looked at him, coughing a little, which turned the inside of the oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose steamy grey.

House perched himself on the edge of his friend's bed, and put his stethoscope in his ears, listening to Wilson's breathing.

Wilson coughed.

House rested the back of his hand against Wilson's cheek, for a rough estamite of temperature.

Wilson reached up, weakly pulling the mask a few inches away from his mouth, rasping, "I'm sorry *cough* I got *cough* sick…"

House shook his head, and pushed the mask back over Wilson's nose and mouth.

"You didn't *get* sick, Wilson. There was only one member of the staff in this entire hospital that has been in all twenty-three rooms—ever."

Wilson frowned.

Then his brown eyes widened, and he pointed to himself.

House nodded, "we think it's a fungus. You inhaled the spores, but since you're heathy, you didn't get sick right away. But you breathed those spores out on your patients. None of them needed to be in clean-rooms when you came, so you didn't wear a mask and gown. You were fine until the thermostat got broken, and your office turned into an icebox. The cold weakened your immune system, you got sick."

Wilson closed his eyed, upset.

House sighed, "A) it's not your fault. B) this is a bad time for you to shut down. The kids are searching your home for the source, but if there's anything you can think of that might be the source, it'll speed things up."

Wilson seemed to think.

Finally, he shook his head, coughing violently.

House gripped the younger doctor's shoulder, as Wilson struggled to sit up, not getting anything close to enough oxygen.

House reached, and upped the oxygen percentage being pumped into the mask.

Wilson's o2 stats stabilized, but the younger doctor was exhausted, leaning against House's shoulder as he struggled to take each wheezing breath.

House raised the head of Wilson's bed, and gently eased his friend back against the mattress.

Wilson closed his eyes.

House started to get off the bed, but Wilson reached out, gripping House's sleeve.

House sighed, and eased back onto the mattress.

"Okay," he said, quietly, "I can stay until the kids get back."

Wilson nodded, letting go of House's sleeve.

House scooted around so he was sitting next to Wilson up against the head of the bed.

Wilson gripped his sleeve again, though more as an anchor than to keep him from leaving.

His breath was coming in shallow, painful wheezes, interspersed with long bouts of violent coughing.

He looked like he could barely hold his head up, and his face was flushed with fever.

Eventually, House's phone rang.

He answered it, and swore when he heard the news.

"They didn't find anything," said House, neglecting to mention that one of the other patients had just gone into full on respiratory arrest.

He looked at Wilson, then grabbed a pen and paper off the table next to Wilson's bed, and placed them in his friend's hands.

"I need you to write down every place you've been in the last week. Every thing you touched, every person you spoke to, every patient you saw. If you did clinic, tell me the hours, and I'll have the kids retrieve the files."

Wilson nodded weakly, and started writing.

House put a stack of papers onto the differential room table.

"This is everything he did for the last week. Read through it. Check if anyone mentioned in it is sick, besides the patients. Note any activity or place that could have exposed him to any kind of fungus or bacteria, or parasite, or anything like that."

They nodded, and took the papers.

Then looked at him.

"This is illegible."

House sighed, rubbing his forehead, "can anyone read it?"

They all shook their heads.

House picked up a sheet.

Even he could only half make out the scrawl.

He looked up at the ceiling.

Wilson was barely able to stay awake now. They couldn't get him to write this all again, or even type it.

"I bet Marco could read it…" said Kutner.

House looked at the younger doctor.

Then he pointed at the door, "go, fetch."

Kutner hurried out.

Their pagers went off.

House looked at his, and then hooked it back on his pants, eyes closed.

Wilson had gone into respiratory arrest.

"Um," said Marco, pointing to the paper, "he says he washed the dishes, and then he says he washed "the mug", like they're two different things. It's the first thing I've found that stands out at all—"

House was out the door faster than anyone in the room would have though possible—especially Foreman, who knew the pain had been starting to come back.

House stuck his head back in, "Marco, you come with me."

"You washed "the mug". What is the mug?" asked House, limping into Wilson's room, and sitting down on the bed, handing his intubated friend the pen and paper again.

Wilson wrote something, wincing because his wrist hurt horribly.

House handed the pad to Marco.

"Amber's mug. She had ginger tea in it the night before she died. I couldn't bring myself to wash it."

House sighed.

"Coccidioidomycosis. It was in the ground-up ginger from the dirt the ginger was grown in. Being in the tea rehydrated it, and I'm guessing there was still tea left in the cup, letting it grow further. But by the time you washed it, the tea had all dried up. Amber would have been fine even though she drank it, but you breathed in the multiplied spores when you disturbed the cup. It fits all the symptoms."

Wilson closed his eyes.

House could tell he was crying.

House looked at Marco, "tell them it's coccidioidomycosis."

He nodded and left.

House gripped his friend's hand.

Wilson watched him, large brown eyes filled with tears.

"It's okay, Jimmy," said House, softly, "you'll be fine, though you might have some mild lung trouble even after the infection clears up."

Wilson squeezed House's hand, and House squeezed back.

Three days later, Wilson was taken off the ventilator, and allowed to go home.

He looked at House, silently, as he sat on bed leaning against the raised head, fully dressed, with an oxygen tank sitting next to him on the bed, and a nasal cannula around his head.

"You wanna stay with me for a while?"

Wilson nodded, looking exhausted.

House nodded, "okay. I'll take your stuff to the car."

He was almost to the door, the strap of Wilson's pack over his shoulder, when he heard a rasping, out-of-breath voice, "thank you."

He turned around.

And nodded.

"Yeah. Just hang in there, Jimmy."

Wilson nodded, looking tired.

When House got back, Wilson was asleep.

House gently tugged the nasal cannula back into position from where it had gotten shifted when Wilson slumped.

Wilson stirred, opening his eyes.

House gripped his arm, and Wilson all but tumbled off the bed onto the floor, his legs utterly uncooperative and about as strong as cooked noodles.

House helped him into a wheelchair, and whistled, which brought Kutner into the room.

Wilson smiled tiredly, as the young doctor took up a position behind the wheelchair.

By the time they got up the ramp House had set up over his front steps, both of them were out of breath, although Wilson hadn't actually done anything, he just could barely breathe.

House folded the wheelchair, and took Wilson's arm, as the younger doctor stumbled in the vague direction of the couch.

He led Wilson into the bedroom instead, where a jumble of pillows was piled up against the head of the bed—the better to keep Wilson from suffocating in his sleep.

He smiled tiredly at House, as he crawled into the bed.

"Wilson?"

Wilson looked at him.

House hugged him.

Wilson sat, utterly stunned.

Then he gently patted his friend on the back.

"It's okay, Greg," he rasped, "I'm okay."

House nodded, but didn't let go.


End file.
